By Bruce Eggler
Times-Picayune (New Orleans)
Copyright 2006 The Times-Picayune Publishing Company
The New Orleans City Council voted unanimously Thursday to give firefighters larger raises than Mayor Ray Nagin’s administration has endorsed.
The council’s vote supports firefighters’ position that they should get $2.1 million in overdue longevity raises on top of, not in place of, a 10 percent across-the-board raise that all other city workers are getting. The 10 percent raise also would cost the city about $2.1 million.
The council’s action, which follows a similar vote last week by its Budget Committee, sets the stage for a crucial meeting Oct. 23 of the city’s Civil Service Commission, which needs to approve the raises before they can take effect.
At recent meetings, the commission has consistently backed the administration’s position on raises for firefighters and other city workers.
The council voted to support the double set of firefighter raises 5-0 with no discussion. Councilman Oliver Thomas and Councilwoman Shelley Midura were absent, but they also had been expected to support the measure.
The latest round in a long-running controversy over firefighters’ pay began when the council voted Aug. 25 to support giving firefighters the same 10 percent raise Nagin had proposed giving to police officers. Nagin had opposed such a raise for firefighters because, under state law, most of them get automatic 2 percent annual raises that other city workers do not receive.
After the council’s vote, the administration shifted its position, announcing that it favored giving a 10 percent raise to city workers in all departments and setting a minimum hourly wage of $7.50 for city workers.
Instead of an across-the-board 10 percent raise for firefighters, however, the administration said it planned to increase the total payroll for the Fire Department by 10 percent, with some firefighters getting as much as a 25 percent raise and some less than 1 percent, and with all the increases counted against the millions the city owes firefighters for the state-mandated 2 percent raises that the city failed for years to implement.
The firefighters protested that position, saying they should get a 10 percent raise in addition to the 2 percent longevity increases they said the city already owed them.
The Civil Service Commission sided with the administration last month, voting to implement the 10 percent citywide raise and the $7.50-an-hour minimum wage, but saying the Fire Department should get only the 10 percent increase in its total payroll, with the money credited against the amounts the city owes firefighters for past-due longevity raises.
The council responded Thursday by affirming its support of the double set of raises.
By a separate 5-0 vote, the council gave final approval to the 10 percent raise for all other city workers and the $7.50 minimum wage, which is nearly $1.50 an hour more than the lowest-paid city workers have been making.
Those raises, which will take effect Nov. 1, apply only to classified workers, but the administration and council are expected to support an ordinance providing the same increases for unclassified employees, meaning mayoral appointees not covered by Civil Service.